What is enterprise data?

Do you find yourself lacking the lingo to speak with data-savvy peers? Want to learn more about corporate data management terms?

Enterprise data is a foundational corporate data management term. Understanding the different forms of enterprise data will help you gain skills for a data analytics career.

What distinguishes enterprise data from the personal data on our phones?

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

Enterprise data are company assets that are essential to a company's financial success.

Let's break down these two terms: data and enterprise. 

Data include:

• Raw forms of unanalyzed facts

• Variety of formats

The term "enterprise" implies:

• Organizational purposes rather than individual purposes

• Complexity and collaboration because it takes a team of skilled professionals to manage enterprise data

Enterprise data are organizational assets that support business objectives, such as:

• Improving customer service

• Determining a company's most profitable product

• Analyzing customer behavior

Enterprise data inform all of these.

Enterprise data can be in multiple forms and can be combined to create other forms of data. Enterprise data are included in corporate database tables but have other forms such as:

• Financial statements

• Company emails

• Business flow diagrams

• Social media content

• Public geographical data

Given the many uses of enterprise data, there is a need for multiple types of enterprise information systems.

These systems can include:

• Transaction processing — Online banking, order-entry systems

  • Collects data from routine transactions

  • Helps businesses manage the present

• Customer relationship management — Salesforce& Microsoft Dynamics 365

  • Centralizes data related to customers

  • Provide analytics on customer behavior

  • Helps businesses prepare for their future

• Metadata management — Informatica Metadata Manager

  • A specialized data governance information system

  • Collects data about an organization's data

  • Helps organizations make better use of their enterprise data

  These systems help make up an organization's enterprise architecture.

Now that you know more enterprise data and where it lives, what are the next steps to increase your awareness of enterprise data management?